


The Brood

by chantefable



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Desert, Dissociation, Gen, Horror, Psychological Horror, War, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 09:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4343648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are zombies in the desert.</p><p>(They are zombies in the desert.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Brood

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on the fictionalized characters in the HBO miniseries, Generation Kill, as written by Ed Burns and David Simon and as portrayed by Alexander Skarsgard, Stark Sands, and others. It is a work of fiction, ergo it never happened.

He was the LT.

They rode in Humvees for what seemed like days on end, without shade or shame under the blazing sun. 

They were in pursuit of something, he wasn't sure what. It could have been time. The desert stretched nowhere and everywhere, one click, two clicks, a hundred clicks. In their tin-plated Humvees, they ploughed the barren land, sowing accurate mortar fire. 

They were spreading. Going forward. Gnawing their way deeper into the desert. Copy that.

They were just following orders.

He was the LT, he thought carefully, relaying the orders to his men. His words were clipped and practical. Economical. His lips were dry and cracked like the desert shuffling underfoot. They were oscar mike, and then they weren't. Hurry up and wait. There was an enduring heaviness to his limbs, a bleak fog lingering, but – he was the LT. They were in pursuit of something, it didn't matter what.

His name was – 

They were roaming, swarming, relocating: there was a distinct pattern to their movements that the LT could feel with his viscera, just like he could feel the aridity and the dazzling sun. It was all sharp, digging in and spiking through his overwhelmingly large body. The LT needed to focus on the mission. It was all sharp all the time, until he was maybe clacking the Morse code with his teeth. He was sharply aware of each immediate destination.

They were moving like a hive or a herd, hurry up and wait, previous missions growing clouded in the LT's mind. The future was clouded, too, but the sky was clear. Marines make do.

They were oscar mike for what seemed like days on end, bleak and wild, driven by a dull, dumb hunger. It was fiercely hot.

The LT's situational awareness did not extend very far.

His name was Nate.

A chill settled in his spine, each vertebra cold and dead like a bullet. He looked around. Were all men accounted for? Some were standing stock-still, keeping watch, and some were keeping busy, their slow fingers clawing on the rifles. 

Maintenance was important, the LT thought, his heart slowing down as he mentally ticked them off one by one: Corporal, Corporal, that one, the other one, Corporal, Lance Corporal. Some of them were strange imprints on his mind, a presence and a sluggish memory: sometimes the features, sometimes the height and size, sometimes the smell. 

The LT kept looking around, the weight of the tedious task crushing his windpipe even as it was oddly reassuring. He identified all of them, a fleeting sense rather than detailed, coherent information: a man who was a brick shed, a man who was gun lube, rifle, steering wheel, dead boy, dead dog. Some of his men had names. Person. Espera. Colbert. It was strange that some didn't have names, like – there were gaping holes in his memory. 

But there couldn't be any holes. The grooming standard was important. He checked himself, dragging dust-bitten fingers over his body. There weren't any holes anywhere on him.

Maintenance was important.

Mentally, he went down to the end of list, thoughts catching on ragged edges but eventually rolling past. Ray. Rudy. Tony. Walt. Brad. All men were accounted for. 

There was Ray, staring into the distance with his mouth wide open, gaze listless and bestial. There was Rudy, there was Brad, and he was Nate.

Nate.

He slipped back into his reverie, watching little specks of dust settle against the slick grime sticking to his boots. 

Squinting against the hard light, he watched the desert rippling away from them. He watched the bloody fingerprints on the windshield. Watched the thick, acrid-smelling stain on the hood, and the way Trombley slowly rubbed it off, dragging a filthy rag back and forth with rigid hands.

The LT watched over his men, proprietary, silent, calm. He could see the protruding lines of Colbert's spine and ribs as he hunched over a device, staring at it with unseeing eyes, his mouth dark and dry. 

He'd had his share, then. It was good.

The LT moved stiffly, dragging his heels over the barren, forbidding land, and listened for the sound of food. He could hear most of the men digging graves for the night. He could hear the wet, satisfied silence.

It was good. 

It was hard to breathe.

They advanced into the desert, slow and deliberate. Relentless despite the howl of the wind, the sandstorm putting living walls in front of them. The air was dry, and the LT's eyes were dry, too. He was severely desiccated, and his heart pumped a slow, cracking rhythm as he watched his men dry out and turn hollow, nothing but a thousand-yard stare and mean flesh shriveled and stretched tight over white bones. 

He saw bones peeking out of their uniforms sometimes, dirty white with a hint of rosy tissue. But they kept rolling, teeth and anger bared as they drove on and on, pulverizing time under the tires of their Humvees while they eagerly devoured the distance. 

One click. Two clicks. A hundred clicks. Hurry up and wait.

Time oozed slowly, like pus from an open wound. Time was thick and viscous, saturated with bombs going off in the villages and people falling down in the rifles' sights. Every stretch of time when they were briefly aware of the before and after was an eternity. The LT needed to focus on the mission: he was relaying orders, keeping his hunting pack together. He felt hollow, and also cold, and not only on the freezing nights.

The LT watched over his men. He could feel them sleeping in their graves, insatiable and starved. He could feel them on the move, fifty per cent watch, silent, deadly. 

They were making do, covered in blood and grime, clinging to sensual habits as if some shut-eye or a combat jack could bring back something they didn't remember tearing away.

The LT felt what they did. He was plagued by the same dumb hunger, born through no will of theirs but bred in their competent, skilled bodies, shapely vessels of death.

They were making do, despair curled up in the marrow of their bones, slimy and worm-like. 

One click. Two clicks. A hundred clicks. Hurry up and wait.

He was Nate. He was assured of this.


End file.
